The Sermon I Was Going to Preach - Walking the Road of Disappointment

Below is the sermon I was going to preach at our three worship services this morning.  It is based on the Emmaus Road story in Luke.  I did preach this at 8:15 am, but when it came time for the sermon at the other two services, I went off script in the middle.  I will post that sermon shortly.

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The date was March 28, 1992,
and I was in Philadelphia on a traditional dinner and a movie date.
We were eating dinner at one of those restaurants that has TV screens scattered all over the place.
Most times I hate this, but on that day it was okay.
In fact, it was better than okay because the University of Kentucky was playing a game in the NCAA basketball tournament,
and in case you don’t know this yet, I am a Kentucky Wildcats’ fan.
If you cut me, I bleed blue, Wildcat blue.

Now this was an important game for every Wildcat fan,
because it marked the return to national prominence for our beloved basketball program.
In the 1988-89 school year, Kentucky had suffered through it’s only losing season ever with a 13-19 record.
Even worse, the head coach had been fired and the NCAA had penalized the program because of rules violations.
UK basketball was at an all time low.

But then, Rick Pitino had been hired as head coach,
and after a 14-14 record his first year, and a 22-6 record the following year,
we were now 27-6 and playing in the East Regional Final for a place in the NCAA Final Four.
Only one team stood in our way - The Duke Blue Devils.
At halftime, the score was Duke 50, Kentucky 45,
But by the end of the game, the score was tied at 93 all.
And so the game went into overtime.
With Duke leading 102-101,
Sean Woods, a Kentucky player, connected with the basket.
UK was now ahead 103-102 and there was only 2.1 seconds left in the game.
Kentucky fans the world over were already celebrating.
We were finally going back to the Final Four.
But then, after a timeout, Duke’s Grant Hill inbounded the ball with a 75 foot pass to Christian Laettner,
who put down a quick dribble, turned, and then launched a 17-foot jump shot that swooshed through the basket.
With no time left, the score was 104-103, and Duke had won the game.

To say that I was disappointed with this outcome is a major understatement.
It was like someone had sucker-punched me.
I couldn’t breath, and I couldn’t believe that this had actually happened.
You see, I had hoped that this would be the team that would bring Kentucky it’s sixth national championship.
But now, that dream was gone.
I had thought that this would be the team.
But I was wrong.

In the spring of 1989, I was finishing my final year in Seminary.
I was also in my first year as a pastor serving a small rural church in southern Lancaster county.
The Admission’s director at Drew told me about a job opening he had heard about at Union College in Kentucky.
Union was looking for a college chaplain who would also be able to teach a few courses at the school.
It was the perfect job for me.
I could move back home to Kentucky,
I could preach and pastor without being tied to a local church (something I really didn’t want to do),
and I could teach one or two college courses a semester.
It was the ideal situation.

I flew down to Cincinnati, rented a car, and drove into the mountains of Kentucky where Union College is located.
I met the College President,
interviewed with various committees,
took an extensive tour of the campus,
and at the end of the day felt that I had made a very good impression.
Once home, I anxiously waited for some news.
It came in the form of a letter from the College President.
In it he told me that of all the candidate interviewed,
two of us stood out: a young woman from Vanderbilt and Me.

He praised us both and said that as far as he was concerned we were equally qualified for the position,
which, however, they were offering to the young woman, since in his words, “We’ve never had a woman chaplain before and want to try something new.”
And even though I am a died-in-the-wool liberal when it comes to equal opportunities for all, this was devastating news.
You see, I had already been formulating my moving plans,
and now, I was being told that I would be staying right where I was.
It took me a while to get over this loss, because, you see,
I had thought that this job was the one for me.
I had hoped that this was what God wanted (at least it was what I wanted),
I had thought this was it, but it wasn’t.

One more scene for you:
I am a sophomore in high school,
and my dad has been the pastor of a little store front church for 3 years.
Growth has been slow, but things are beginning to look up.
The pews are beginning to get a little crowded - all ten of them,
and there was talk of buying some land and building a new church.
Along the way, however, something has gone wrong in the relationship between my dad and mom.
Their life has never been easy,
but the pressures have been mounting for some time.
Every day they got up at 5 am to drive almost two hours to their jobs in an appliance factory.
Eight back-breaking and monotonous hours later,
it was two more hours back home.
After supper, my dad would go out for several more hours of church work.

I guess it all became too much,
and somewhere, somehow, along the way,
my dad lost his bearings.
He began an affair with a church member.
The night I realized this, my mom was in the hospital.
She was suffering from what the doctors called “nervous exhaustion.”
It was late, after eleven, and I am sure my dad thought my brother and I were asleep - but I wasn’t.

Our bedrooms were separated by the thinnest of walls,
and in the quiet I heard my dad talking on the phone in hushed whispers.
He was telling someone that he loved her,
that he wanted to be with her and not my mom.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but there it was,
and a few short weeks later my family life had been shattered.
It was bad enough that my Mother, brother and I were now on our own.
Money, which had always been tight, would be even tighter.
Our lifestyle, already bordering on working-class poor would plunge further down the socio-economic scale.
But the sense of betrayal and loss was palpable,
and there was also a profound disappointment with my dad.
You see, I had thought of him, as not only my dad, but also as my role model in the faith.
I had wanted to be like him and had hoped to follow in his footsteps,
and now he had throw his life and us away.
I had thought that if anyone could be a Christian,
if anyone could be faithful to their calling,
then that person was my Dad.
I had thought this, but I was wrong.

Have you ever been deeply disappointed?
Have you ever experienced a major loss or betrayal.
Have you ever had your expectations and dreams crushed and destroyed?
If so, and I can’t believe that there is a person out there, who hasn’t experienced these things,
then you know how the two followers of Jesus must have felt as they traveled down the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus.

Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way:
“The Road to Emmaus is the road of deep disappointment,
and walking it is the living definition of sad.
It is the road you walk when you lose a big game,
or your candidate for office loses, or you lose your job,
or you lose your loved one to death.
It is the long road of loss.
It is the long road back to an empty house,
an empty seat at the table,
an empty place in bed next to you,
piles of unopened mail,
calls on your answering machine from creditors demanding you call them back instead of friends or family offering you a cup of water in your misery.
The Road to Emmaus is real.
(Drawn from Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, Cowley Publications, Boston, Mass, p. 20).

And it is on this road that we find two defeated disciples,
headed out of town toward Emmaus, toward nowhere.
These two followers of Christ are tired;
they have heavy hearts and leaden feet,
and they walk to Emmaus to forget,
to forget about Jesus and the great failure that was his life among them.
They are walking away and will try to pick up the pieces of their shattered dreams and start over.
And if we look hard enough we will see shadows of ourselves walking down the same road.

Cleopas and his companion, like many others, had trusted in Jesus.
They had put all their hopes, expectations and even their love in him.
And for awhile it had looked good.
Just a week before Jesus had been welcomed to the city as a conquering hero,
palm fronds waving and people shouting,
“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.”
And they had thought,
no, they had hoped, that he, that Jesus, would be the one.
They had thought and hoped this,
but they had been wrong.
And now they were simply trying to get away from their disappointment and despair by going to Emmaus.

Suddenly, however, on this God-forsaken road a stranger appears;
he walks and talks with them,
he draws out their hopes and dreams.
He slowly allows them to voice their fears and doubts,
and finally, at their table in the evening,
their hopes and dreams were renewed when they realize that the stranger in their midst is no other than Jesus himself,
their master, their teacher, their Lord - risen from the dead.

One writer has put it well:
Searching for resurrection signs and hope along a stone-strewn path,
amid the jumble of confusion, the rubble of lost dreams,
and the residue of Friday,
two travelers on a Sunday walk talk to a Stranger who takes time to speak,
break bread, pour wine and show his face and wounded hands, now healed.

The Sunday Stranger still walks and talks and tarries
with those who will invite him in.
As life unfolds like lily blooms among the sharp-edged stones,
pick up your gait and follow on.
Take him each step along your way.
Invite him to your table.
Read life and scripture through his eyes.
And let your heart be warmed.

The truth is that we will all travel the road to Emmaus at one time or another in our lives, and most of us will make many trips on it during our lives.
We may come to the road full of doubt and fear for many reasons-
a loved may have died leaving us questioning God.
our faith may waver in the face of overwhelming obstacles -
so many hungry, so many poor, so much hatred,
or perhaps love will seem to vanish -
a husband or wife may leave us, or a child reject us.
But regardless of the reason we come,
we walk down the road with heavy hearts and leaden feet.
But a stranger awaits us, and in the encounter with the stranger - our risen Lord - we soon know that fear and doubt cannot overcome hope,
darkness cannot overcome light,
hatred cannot win out over love,
and death can never, ever overcome life.

The trouble is that it can be difficult in our disappointment to recognize the stranger for who he is.
The disciples had this trouble.
Like the travelers on the road to Emmaus,
Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize the risen Lord at the tomb,
but instead thought he was a gardener.
Later on, even Simon Peter fails to recognize the stranger on the shore.
I guess that’s to be expected.

So how do we recognize him?
How do we know that Jesus is with us?
Where can we find our risen Lord?
I think that there are at least two answers to these questions.

First of all, we can find Jesus in the faces of those around us -
in the ordinary bodies of our friends, neighbors, and even our enemies.
The disciples saw Jesus as a gardener, a foreigner, a stranger on the road.
In Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that on the Judgement day both the good and the bad will receive their rewards.
And what is the basis for the judgment?
It is found in our reactions to those in the world around us.
Jesus says, “For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and in prison and you visited me.”

Christ is found in people all around you,
and if you look you will find a glimpse of the crucified one here and there,
in the face of a gardener, a foreigner, a stranger.
And as Barbara Brown Taylor says,
“If we are thorough in our looking,
we will handle each person we meet with care just in case it is he;
If we are diligent we will wash some feet along the way,
feed some hungers, and soothe some sorrows,
just in case they are his . . . after all, you can never be too sure.”

She goes on to add, however,
“There is, of course, a problem with this approach.
It is possible that we will forget exactly what Jesus is supposed to look like.
We may very well come to realize that our portraits and pictures of him do not do him justice.
With so many faces to sort through, some of the details are bound to get lost.
Were his eyes brown, or faded blue like that old woman’s?
Was his skin smooth or wrinkled like that tired looking fellow’s?
Did he walk straight or did he limp like that little boy with the crutch?
Chances are, if we look hard enough,
we will begin to see a little bit of him in everyone we meet.”
Perhaps even in those sitting with us in worship this morning.
And so it is that Christ is with us – with us in others.

Christ is also with us, and can be found in the meal we are about to share.
It is no small thing that the ones on the road to Emmaus only came to recognize Jesus after he took bread, blessed it, and broke it.
It’s a clear reference to the Lord’s supper, to communion.
And it is in the simple things of juice and bread that we can experience again the presence of Christ.

But how is this possible, you might ask?
I have in my hands two gifts that were given me by friends.
They are gifts, but they are also much more,
for in giving me these gifts my friends gave a part of themselves to me.
I can not look at these items and not think of the ones who gave them to me.
It is impossible for me to see them without experiencing the love and care that went into their picking them out and giving them to me.
And so in a sense the gift becomes the giver in my mind’s eye.
The gift and giver become intertwined and cannot be separated.

Christ has also given us a great gift.
When he last ate with his disciples,
he took bread and wine and gave it to them and told them to eat and drink.
He told them to do this often in remembrance of him.
And so it is, that we cannot come to the table of our Lord and eat the bread and drink from the cup without acknowledging the gift,
the precious gift that these things are.
You cannot take these items and not think of the one who gave them to us.
And again, in a very real sense the gift becomes the giver in our mind’s eye.
The gift and the giver become one,
they become intertwined together and cannot be separated.

When we come to see Jesus in the stranger,
when we see Jesus in the gifts of the vine and bread,
we know that we are never alone. Never.
In seeing and experiencing the risen Lord in these two ways,
we are provided with hope enough,
with strength enough, with faith enough, and with joy enough to overcome any disappointment, despair or disillusionment that life may bring our way.

When troubles come and our world begins to crumble around us, we want to forget.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus had followed Jesus and now it was all over – it had all been for nothing – or so they thought.
But then Jesus appears,
he walks and talks with them,
he breaks bread with them,
and as he does, a breeze begins to blow across the ashes of their hopes.
And what was true for them is true for me.
And it is true for you as well.

For those who have experienced disappointment, brokenness and loss,
I give you Jesus.
Jesus, our crucified and risen Lord,
who has come to us and shared our common lot,
who has conquered sin and death”
and who meets people on the roadway of disappointment, sadness and distress,
and who through the very people they already know,
can bring healing and wholeness and hope.
I give you Jesus,
who seems to prefer working with people whose hearts are broken,
whose dreams are broken,
whose lives are broken,
whose world is broken.
Jesus, who in his own brokenness,
takes bread and breaks it and gives it to us, saying,
This is my body.
Jesus, who promises to us that wherever two or more are gathered in his name,
he is there with them.
Jesus, who tells us that he will never leave us or forsake us.
Jesus, whose death and life we share in baptism,
and who calls us to share his love and grace with everyone we meet,
so that no one has to walk the road to Emmaus alone.